Praktyki kuratorskie Haralda Szeemana. Od laboratorium do ahistoryzmu

The text discusses the practice of the Swiss art historian and curator Harald Szeemann (1933– 2005), based on the example of two exhibitions: Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, organised at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969, and A-Historische Klanken held at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1988. Drawing upon existing research as well as material from the archive of Harald Szeemann, the article focuses on Szeemann’s innovative approach to the concept of group exhibition and museum display. Szeemann’s curatorial practice was not only concerned with challenging existing models for displaying contemporary art, but also with re-inventing the position of the art institution, whose he saw as extending beyond the exhibition hall as the setting in which to show self-contained artworks, and the museum as a site of self-regulated production of knowledge. It was by contesting these paradigms that Harald Szeemann paved the way for the birth of the profession of art curator as it is known today